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The Nonpartisan League (NPL) was a political organization founded in 1915 in the United States by Arthur C. Townley, former organizer for the Socialist Party of America. On behalf of small farmers and merchants, the Nonpartisan League advocated state control of mills, grain elevators, banks and other farm-related industries in order to reduce the power of corporate political interests from Minneapolis, Minnesota and Chicago, Illinois.
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In the 1910s, a different Non-Partisan League operated in Alberta, Canada . Among its candidates was former governor of Kansas John W. Leedy, who had moved to Canada and become a citizen. He ran as a candidate for the Alberta NPL in the 1917 Alberta provincial and federal elections, but was not elected.
The NPL in the United States originated in North Dakota, but eventually spread throughout the American Midwest and Pacific Northwest during and after the Progressive Era. It briefly had the status of a national party. It also attracted members and organization in Canada, with representatives running in provincial elections. Its leaders contributed to development of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan and the Progressive Party of Canada.
The NPL goat served as the US League's mascot. It was known as "The Goat that Can't be Got."
History
The League developed beginning in 1915, a time when small farmers in North Dakota felt exploited by out-of-state companies. One author later described the wheat-growing state as "really a tributary province of Minneapolis-St. Paul". Minnesota banks made its loans, Minnesota millers handled its grain, and Alexander McKenzie, North Dakota's political boss, lived in St. Paul. Rumors spread at an American Society of Equity meeting in Bismarck that a state legislator named Treadwell Twichell had told a group of farmers to "go home and slop the hogs." Twichell later said that his statement was misinterpreted. He had been instrumental in previous legislative reforms to rescue the state from boss rule by MacKenzie and the Northern Pacific Railroad around the start of the 20th century.
Arthur C. Townley, a failed flax farmer from Beach, North Dakota, and former organizer for the Socialist Party of America, had attended the Society of Equity meeting. Afterward Townley and a friend, Frank B. Wood, drew up a radical political platform at Wood's kitchen table that addressed many of the farmers' concerns. Soon, Townley was traveling the state in a borrowed Model T Ford signing up NPL members for a payment of $6 in dues. Farmers were receptive to Townley's ideas and joined in droves.
Proposing that the state of North Dakota create its own bank, warehouses, and factories, the League, supported by a groundswell of "six-dollar suckers", ran its slate as Republican candidates in the 1916 elections. It won control of the state legislature and elected a farmer, Lynn Frazier, as governor with 79% of the vote. It also elected John Miller Baer to the United States House of Representatives. After the 1918 elections, in which the NPL won control of both houses of the legislature, the League enacted a significant portion of its platform. It established state-run agricultural enterprises such as the North Dakota Mill and Elevator, the Bank of North Dakota, and a state-owned railroad. The legislature passed a graduated state income tax, distinguishing between earned and unearned income; authorized a state hail insurance fund, and established a workmen's compensation fund that assessed employers. In addition, the device of popular recall of elected officials was enacted. The NPL also set up a Home Building Association, to aid people in financing and building houses.
During World War I, Townley demanded the "conscription of wealth", blaming "big-bellied, red-necked plutocrats" for the war. He and fellow leader William Lemke received support for the League from isolationist German Americans. The NPL's initial success was short-lived. A drop in commodity prices at the close of the war, together with a drought, caused an agricultural depression.
As a result, the new state-owned industries ran into financial trouble, and the private banking industry, smarting from the loss of its influence in Bismarck, rebuffed the NPL when it tried to raise money through state-issued bonds. The industry said that the state bank and elevator were "theoretical experiments" that might easily fail. Moreover, the NPL's lack of governing experience led to perceived infighting and corruption. Newspapers and business groups portrayed the NPL as inept and disastrous for the state's future.
The socialist origins of many NPL members, who were European immigrants, and its widely publicized isolationist leanings during World War I also compromised its popular appeal. In 1921, after an investigation of the state bank showed it to be insolvent, voters had a special election and recalled Frazier, the first U.S. state governor to be recalled.
The decade of the 1920s was relatively prosperous for farmers, and the NPL's popularity receded. But the populist undercurrent that fueled its meteoric growth revived with the coming of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl conditions of the 1930s. The NPL's William "Wild Bill" Langer was elected to the governorship in 1932 and 1936 (the two two-year terms separated by his declaration of North Dakota's secession from the United States in 1934, and his serving a jail term). After serving as governor, Langer was elected to the U.S. Senate, serving from 1940 until his death in 1959.
North Dakota Mill and Elevator and the Bank of North Dakota continue to operate today. The legislature in 1932 prohibited corporate farming and corporate ownership of farmland. But industrial agriculture dominates the state in the 21st century.